


The 00:25 to LA

by RavenAurelieChoiseau



Category: Sterek - Fandom, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A bit Canon-deviant, Angst and Feels, Blow Jobs, Bus Sex, Come Eating, Come Sharing, Come Swallowing, Cora Hale's death mentioned, Derek Hale is in his early thirties, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Murder, Mutual Masturbation, Protective Derek, Public Blow Jobs, Public Hand Jobs, Public Masturbation, Smut, Stiles is 27, Stiles was hurt emotionally in the past, surprise meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 09:43:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16083518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenAurelieChoiseau/pseuds/RavenAurelieChoiseau
Summary: Derek and Stiles were happy. Then Cora was found murdered. Blinded by a need for vengeance, Derek left Beacon Hills, eventually finding and killing the man responsible. Caught, he was forced to serve 6 of his ten-year sentence in prison.The story begins when Stiles and Derek meet by chance on a Greyhound bus bound for Los Angeles. Derek has just been released from prison and Stiles is going to a job interview after working for a brief time in Vegas. They speak, and the old spark quickly becomes a flame. The need is overwhelming and they pleasure each other on the bus.At the end, will they be able to get past their demons?





	The 00:25 to LA

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to a podcast and got the idea for the bus setting. I used to take these buses when I was in college, and I still vividly remember some of the characters I met on there.  
> There is little description of Cora's death, nor of the murder and his prison stay. I didn't want to focus on the violent part of Derek's past.  
> Stiles has a fling with Peter when Derek leaves, he's wrecked with grief. Just a heads up for those who aren't Steter fans. It's really just a couple sentences mentioning it. The rest is pretty much in the tags. Enjoy.

Bus stations always bustle with people. There are souls arriving, souls departing. Not in the existential sense. Not in the flat-lining, eternal life sense. (Well, sometimes).  
Mostly just in the coming and going from point A to point B sense.  
It’s a lot of chaos and not enough organization. Luggage gets loaded onto coaches blowing exhaust fumes into spaces too confined to properly air out.  
Choking passengers queue to board, single file lines of anonymous faces displaying emotions on a bipolar spectrum. From the happy grandfather looking forward to holding the latest arrival in the family, to the late-twenties-something blond stumbling away from an abusive relationship. What gives her away are the bruises poorly hidden under cheap Maybelline foundation and a shelter address folded in her pocket. Scraped hands are busied by two frightened toddlers who clutch dirty plush toys under their chins, uncertain of where they will wake up tomorrow. The crucial thing for her is that it won’t be to flying dishes and raining fists.  
  
Wallets aren’t lined with money in bus depots. Otherwise restless, haggard souls would have opted for quicker, arguably more comfortable means of transport. Usually trembling hands count out fares in small change at greasy ticket windows. When it’s not enough, and the promise of a new tomorrow sinks below the soles of twitching teenagers’ worn Converse, the runaways offer quick and precarious sexual satisfaction in the restrooms in exchange for the rest. Enter at your own risk.  
Bus stations harbor an air of hope, but more often one of desperation. It depends which side of the dirty glass you are peering from.  
People are either running towards a dream, or away from disappointment and heartbreak.  
Stiles Stilinski was doing the former, and Derek Hale the latter.

7B. Derek Hale’s seat. He’s pressed his back into the cushion, arms folded over his broad chest.  
Undecided on whether he should remove his leather jacket, he struggles to find a comfortable position. It’s hot now, but it will be cold soon. As soon as the driver cranks up the air conditioning. For the moment he suffers out the wait.  
He shuts his eyes tight, hoping that sleep will come and that he looks menacing enough to scare off any potential “neighbors.”  
Derek chose a night bus on purpose. Sleep means he isn’t conscious enough to think or speak. The last thing he wants to do right now is engage. No one wants to be chained inside their own minds for 5 hours.  
_God, I hope nobody sits next to me. Especially a talker._  
  
Stiles Stilinski shifts from left foot to right, determined to see his bag into the hold before getting on. The contents of his suitcase aren’t precious, but he’d hate for his things to go missing.  
Stiles is protective of his possessions. Just like he’s protective of his loved ones. When he ponders this, how fucking attached he gets to things, memories flash in his mind like Polaroids.  
Scott. His father. Lydia.  
Derek. Peter. Chris.  
Scalding skin. Bruised lips. Hunger. Darkness. Escape. _Fuck._  
Shake them all until they develop.  
  
The brunette boards the bus, a sob caught in his throat. One stop in LA and then back to Beacon Hills. It's been a while.  
He pauses in the aisle. Scans the people already seated, gauging which ones might be the least likely to rob him or kill him in his sleep. This is a bus leaving from Vegas after all. Nobody on here won it big at the casinos.  
About a third of the way down, aisle seat, a man catches his eye. More to the point, his presence knocks the wind out of the boy.  
Raven-haired. Seems the right build. But it couldn’t be. The area is shadowed but… something about his jaw.  
No. Stiles does the math.  
His legs carry him faster than he expected and Stiles bumps into a couple headrests on the way. Frozen in his place when he has confirmation.  
Close your mouth, Stilinski. You might catch flies.  
  
_Holy shit. It’s him. It’s Derek._  
Stiles quakes. The wolf looks nearly identical as to when he “departed” Beacon Hills. He’s got a cropped salt and pepper beard now, which does everything for him if Daddy kinks are someone’s thing. And they are definitely Stiles’ “thing.”  
Derek fucking Hale.  
Everyone knew he went to prison. There was no bullshitting in town. Derek had fallen apart when Sheriff Stilinski had found Cora dead in the woods, body mangled so badly Peter had to step up and identify it. No one knew who did it. Probably a drifter. Derek had been so heartbroken he didn’t leave the loft for a week. Wouldn't even look at food sideways.   
When he emerged he was his own spirit. Thin, pale, lips cracked like broken dreams from nervous biting and dehydration. He wouldn't speak. It was hard on Stiles. What do you do with a mute lover who refuses your help?  
  
The wolf always had a defect that Peter Hale did not: a conscience. It was lethal.  
  
Tragedy seemed to follow the Hales like shadows on a summer day. The early morning after the funeral, when his silhouette was still warm on Stiles’ sheets and the sun slumbered, the Alpha had taken off. Bound on a mission that would lead no where good.  
Peter could only hope his nephew would be smart enough to disappear when the deed was done.  
  
Alas, the Alpha was impulsive. Though he bided his time, he finally discovered who was to blame for his sister's death. Unlike the moon's influence, he couldn’t resist the pull of his rage. He dragged the half-dead man over state lines, feasting on his entrails in the desert on a moon-lit night. It didn’t take long for Derek to be caught. Days. The trial and sentencing took months.  
The system didn’t know what to do with him. His DNA was all over the corpse, but it seems "coyotes" had torn the man apart during the night. How Derek Hale killed him remained a mystery (but only to the courts). When in doubt, it seemed, the policy was nevertheless a conviction. So much for innocent until proven guilty.  
  
Thank god for self-control, because Derek Hale was supposed to do a dime for second-degree murder in the state of Nevada. As a fucking werewolf. Had he been a newbie, it would have made for an interesting first full moon inside. Derek mostly kept his nose clean. He was out in 6 years for good behavior.  
No need to talk about how his cellmates kept having mental breakdowns (roughly once a month) until finally the people in charge got fed up and put him in his own cell in Ad Seg.  
Nobody looks good in beige but Derek Hale would glow up even a trash bag.

Here is the rebirth.  
  
The brunette grasps the seat’s edge. White-knuckled. The bus tips, but only in his mind. His lungs constrict. The feel of Derek’s slick lips is his last memory of the wolf.  
Rough. Hungry. Glossed in possibility.  
The aftermath was less pretty than the chartreuse eyes that had gazed upon him lovingly before leaving, without warning, in the dead of night.  
  
Pain. Heartbreak. Poor choices. Again… escape. _Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned._  
Each time Peter pounded him into his mattress the Polaroid of the other wolf blurred. Peter Hale’s cologne clung to him for days afterwards. When the claw marks faded, and the throbbing stopped, only then did he entertain regret.  
One Hale another Hale didn’t make, but it was close enough to help him forget. For a time.

Derek Hale.  
The wolf’s skin prickles and his lids open slowly. Nostrils flaring. A familiar scent. Familiar but… from a lifetime ago. It pulls open the creaky door to a vault he had thought had been sealed forever.  
For a moment he thinks he’s dreaming.  
“Stiles?” A broken voice forms the name. The face looking down upon him grins nervously.  
“Hi Der.”

Just a few more crinkles around the eyes than the wolf recalled. Longer hair.  
Still breathtaking. Definitely still quirky. The _Stranger Things_ t-shirt hugging his new muscles is SO Stiles.  
  
Stilinski, Mieczysław. My heart burns there, too.  
  
Derek won’t admit it but he’s trembling. His limbs tingle. Fingertips ache to reach out, suffocate the boy with kisses. He doesn't stir.   
Instead, green eyes like green lanterns indicate the place next to him.  
“Stiles, care to sit here?”  
  
_Holy shit, I missed those eyes._  
Not the reunion Stiles was hoping for. No fake “Oh my god” screams and hugs that make you wheeze. Derek stands, letting the brunette pass and slink into the recliner. The fake leather makes a weird sound.  
“Thanks.”  
What a stupid thing to say, but Stiles, for once, finds himself speechless.  
Derek’s quivering hands fall between his legs. He clears his throat.  
  
Stiles still smells the same. How is that possible?! How can his scent, laced with spices and toasted almonds, manage to bring the wolf to his knees within seconds?  
  
Stiles Stiles Stiles… get a grip. 18 again. Nibbling at your lip again. Pining for the wolf… again. Have you learned nothing?  
“Derek… how are you? I mean... Jesus, it’s a dumb question. But I haven’t seen you for almost 8 years.”  
Don’t look at him. Don’t.  
The wolf tilts his head. His lips purse.

  _FUCK._  
“I’m okay now. But I’m not going to lie, Stiles. It was a dark time.”  
_Stop batting your long fucking lashes at me._

Derek never forgot that tint of red in Stiles’ cinnamon eyes. Derek never forgot one single detail about the boy. His nights and days were spent clinging to his ghost.  
All Stiles wanted to do was forget. Derek prayed to remember.  
  
“I’m sorry, Der. I’m sorry. I… I’m sorry for never coming to visit. It was–“ could this get more awkward?  
The wolf dares a touch after all this time. It seems foreign yet so fucking natural.  
His palm grazes the top of Stiles’ left hand. The skin there is silky.  
He hasn’t felt another man’s skin like this since…  
  
“Don’t apologize. No one came. Not even Peter. What I did… I probably should have gotten life. I was lucky I killed him as a werewolf. The threat of death, Stiles, is no threat. Death would have been too easy. Life, the torture of reflection. That’s the real punishment.”  
  
The boy watches sea eyes storm over. Derek is far away. Back in his cell.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Der. Still, I should have come. I… for what it’s worth... I thought about you every day, Der.”  
_I tried to fucking forget you but who can fuck away someone like you?_  
  
A sigh fills the silence. If only Stiles knew the dark places his mind went during those years. If it hadn’t been for the hope that love for the brunette offered… Stiles would be talking to a tombstone now.  
“It was for the best, Stiles. You wouldn’t have recognized the person I needed to be in there. But I have no regrets. Everything I did, I did for Cora. I needed to exorcise that from who I was. She was the last of the people I was supposed to protect and I failed. Miserably. It was right I paid the price. In every sense.”  
  
Derek carries his guilt like a gun. Always near and easily accessible as needed.  
He makes sure to take a dose every day, like cough syrup. One teaspoon every 6 hours until you fucking hate yourself so much you don’t want to look in the mirror.  
“I thought about you, too, Stiles.” Faraway glances and then the smile. Oh shit.

Stiles melts.  
  
“Der, I know it sounds like a lie. But I missed you so much. I was devastated.”  
Derek gives the smallest squeeze to the brunette’s knuckles. It’s true. Derek can tell.  
“I left you and I let you down. I’m sorry. You’d be right to hate me. Just like everyone back home probably does.”  
  
_Hate you? How could anyone despise you?_  
  
“No one hates you back home. Please don’t think that. Even my father said he understood your gesture. I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t have done the same thing had something like that happened to my Dad, or Scott, or _… you._ ”  
_You, stupid sourwolf. Even though you broke my fucking heart. I never stopped loving you._  
  
“Derek, you are a part of who I am. The last thing in the world I feel for you is hatred.”  
  
_You’d kill for me? No one would ever kill for a Hale. They’d kill A Hale._

“Truth is hard to swallow, Stiles, when it’s breaded in broken glass. We Hales have never won popularity contests in Beacon Hills. But from a person with your morals, it means a lot.”  
Stiles winces. _I wasn’t so moral. At all. Took but a week for me to find myself between Peter Hale’s thighs. All because I was sure I couldn’t live without you and you were gone._  
  
“We carry our loved ones so high that when they fall, they bring us down with them. I put you in that jail cell with me. I’m sorry.”  
Bad decisions is another thing the men have in common.  
“Anyway, that’s all in the past now. We have to look to the future, right?”  
_Bless me, Father…_ Stiles bends his head in agreement. _Could we be each other’s future?_

  
How easy it is to fall back into feelings they’ve buried for nearly a decade.  
The wolf never gave up hope, cradling Stiles in his heart and using him as an anchor. Sanity wasn’t cheap in the pen.  
Stiles forgave. He forgot when it suited him. The wolf left his stencil on Stiles’ heart and all it took was to see him on a bus headed to LA to fill in the design again.  
  
Paint love with numbers.  
  
Derek briefly closes his eyes, inhaling Stiles’ essence. The boy studies his face. Every little twitch of his tiny nose, every grimace. Even the way he frowned (and he used to do that a lot) was perfection. It is a fucking sin how gorgeous Derek Hale is.  
  
“Der… can I ask you something?”  
The wolf’s paw hasn’t left Stiles’. The boy allows his fingers to inch up and intertwine with his.  
Derek notices the escalation in contact. _Just like that day at the fair. Your hand pulling mine, dragging me to the house of mirrors even though you knew I hated clowns and carnivals. I laughed until my sides hurt. You were always good for me, Stiles. You made me a better man. Until Cora at least._  
  
The engine starts in the meantime. Doors close. The ventilation holes blast out cold air and Stiles shivers. He’s only wearing a t-shirt.  
Derek’s skin picks up on the change in temperature. He won’t suffer the cold but the human next to him has begun to shake.    
The wolf glances over, breaking their handbinding. He wraps the leather jacket around Stiles’ shoulders.  
“You‘ll freeze, Stiley. Take my jacket. I am still a werewolf.”  
  
_Stiley. He called me Stiley._  
  
The wolf runs hot. The brunette is cold. He fingers the jacket, pulling it closer around his neck. It smells like Derek.  
Musk. Sex. A hint of forest. How long ago was the full moon?  
“Thanks, Der.” Stiles didn’t need x-ray vision. Derek had plenty of time to work out and it shows in every hug of his clothing. Stunning.  
  
There was a prompt. What was the question? Derek rests his head against the seat, shifting his body towards the boy. The driver turns off the lights as he pulls out of the lot.  
“Stiles, you wanted to ask me something?”  
There’s just enough room between their faces for the words to settle.  
“I don’t remember,” Stiles whispers. He’s honest. He doesn’t. The biting blushes his lip cherry.  
“Then it wasn’t important.”  
_No, it wasn’t._  
  
The Irish sea meets the Redwood Forest. One boy blinks, and so does the other.  
Timid fingertips. Bold lips. No more space for words.  
  
Derek tastes just like Stiles had memorized.  
The boy’s pointy nose bends into his just like Derek had memorized.  
_Oh god I missed your kiss, Stiles._  
Sweeps of tongues like glissando on a piano. Derek plays the bass chords on Stiles’ thigh.  
Stiles a two-handed melody on Derek’s ribcage.  
  
Hot skin on cool skin becoming warmer skin. Some softness. Some hardness. Balance.  
  
_Is it okay to cry? Fuck. Are we finally going to be gifted our dawn, or will it always be darkness?_  
  
For now, they use the dimness as a cloak. While the few passengers on board sleep, the star-crossed lovers rouse.  
  
Stiles allows his hands to stay on places intimate when the wolf doesn’t protest. It all comes back to him once the zipper’s undone and his fist is once again stroking the wolf’s aching cock. How he likes it gauged so the most compression falls under the head to the little twist at the base with a brush over the balls. Stiles knows just what to do.  
Derek stifles the growl itching in his throat. For so many years he only knew his own calloused palm.  
  
_Stiles. Fuck. Your scent. Skin that smells like gingerbread and tastes just as good._  
Fangs chart every rimple and groove of exposed flesh, applying pressure without breaking dermis.  
The boy barely breathes.  
The wolf frees Stiles’ member, moist to the touch when he thumbs the eager tip.  
Slower, more deliberate tugs for the human. Stiles enjoys the tease.    
  
_Remind yourself to breathe._  
Only the faintest sound of panting and whispering fabric. Foreheads pressed together, limbs entangled like tree roots. It’s as if the past 8 years never happened.  
Derek Hale, a portrait of pleasure painting his visage, sucks in his lower lip. Bucking, he releases into Stiles’ hot mouth with one long exhalation.  
The boy’s head dips just in time to catch his briny spunk.  
Salty like the Irish sea. Like the wolf’s tears.  
One glides down the side of Derek’s cheek.  
  
Sticky mouth to slick mouth. Pillow lips reciprocate.  
It’s his time now. Stiles comes undone, writhing in Derek’s half-embrace as the wolf quietly laps up his cum.  
Fingers rake through the raven tresses, Stiles unable to resist the urge. He whispers it, desires it. Derek acquiesces, falling onto his cock like a man onto his sword. The brunette permits himself a few deep plunges before begging for Derek’s touch.  
  
_You are my sweet death, Stiles._  
  
There isn’t a rest stop for a couple hours. Recomposed, drowsy with orgasm, and _happy,_ the men settle in.  
Stiles nuzzles against Derek’s sternum, kissing the hollow of his throat. The wolf envelopes his lover in his arms and pulls the jacket all the way over their heads, shutting out the world.  
Here, within the makeshift cocoon, they can pretend they are still in Derek's bed at the loft. Cora is alive, Peter is kind. The wolf and the human are carefree.   
  
"I love you, sourwolf," Stiles mumbles, already drifting.   
Lips against the top of his head, Derek sighs softly. "I love you too, Stiley."  
  
In a few hours they will have their sunrise. The threshold somewhere between allegorical and literal.  
No telling what the future will bring. After all, faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it. I put a lot into this story, felt it very vividly. The quotation at the end: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/rabindranath_tagore_121379?src=t_dawn  
> and a reference to Ben's poem from Stephen King's "It."
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, please kudo if you liked it. And comment if you wish, I love to hear from my readers and it's an amazing boost of self-confidence to know that you are enjoying what my sleepless nights produce.


End file.
